Santa Elena Canyon

Bina and the River that Saved Her

They called her Bina, the Apache name for music maker. She had been playing her flute under a cottonwood tree when they muscled her on the bare back of the palomino. She remembered the taught flank muscles of the horse flexing between her legs as a dark arm wrapped around her, finger nails piercing her side. They galloped across the moon lit desert south toward the river and now three years later she glanced one final time at the mouth of the canyon and the raging waters that had set her free.

The geography of the Big Bend region of Texas over the past 250 million years was formed by a series of compression, volcanism and tension events that created mountain terrain which lent itself to a high degree of erosion. Rapid run-off and flash flooding after thunderstorms is the strongest form of erosion but erosion by way of naturally occurring corrosive chemicals like carbonic acid is also a powerful agent in the geological formation of the area. Calcite which forms the bulk of the limestone in the Big Bend is especially susceptible to break down by carbonic acid.

The formative period of the Santa Elena Canyon likely began about two million years ago, a relatively short period in Earth’s geologic time. The cliffs of the eight mile long, 1500 foot deep canyon run along a fault line. The effect of running water, carbonic acid and the oxygen of water corroding the iron sulfate in the igneous rocks of the canyon, coupled with fault line mechanics eroded and cut deep into the earth’s crust and formed this canyon segment in the watercourse of the Rio Grande.

A series of basin and range topography existed along the future Rio Grande corridor and once the erosion sediment of the higher lands filled the basins, a single flowing conduit linked the Rocky Mountain run-off with the Gulf of Mexico, creating a 1950 mile long waterway and our country’s youngest major river system.

Evidence of pre-historic human settlement in the Santa Elena area date back 10,000 to 12,000 years ago. More recently in the 16th century when Spanish explorers came to the area, they filed written reports with the Spanish Monarchy describing a group of hunter-gatherers known as the Jumano. These tribes may have been related to the Puebloan civilization of Arizona and New Mexico.

Mescalero Apache and Commanche became dominant in the area in the 18th and 19th century. These tribes crossed the Rio Grande both in trade and in warfare with the Spanish and the Jumano.

Mammatus Clouds

One week into October a line of thunderstorms formed in the Del Norte Mountains of the Trans-Pecos. Dark anvil shaped thunderheads obscured the tops of Mount Ord and Cathedral Mountain. The slanted penetrating rain sheets could be seen from the town below and then as the late evening sun broke though the thinner clouds in the west a blanket of strange sagging gray puffs of laden visible moisture reflected oddly in the dying light and descended into the town’s valley as if a symbol of some new world chaos.

Mammatus or Mammatocumulus clouds are a rare pouch-like cloud structures that form in sinking air usually in the aftermath or on the underside of a thunderstorm where distinct temperature gradients, moisture and wind shear are present and most often when cumulonimbus anvil clouds have formed. The name is derived from the Latin word Mamma meaning udder or breast as some believe these clouds resemble a woman’s breast.

The opaque and lumpy lobes cluster and can cover the sky for miles and each lobe last an average of ten minutes before evaporation dissolves them. They are usually composed of ice crystals or a combination of ice and water.

Inside the cumulonimbus storm clouds, updrafts carry heavy wet air to the top until the momentum is lost and this subsiding air spreads horizontally and accumulates at the base of the cloud. Sagging with water or ice these air-suspended bosoms dangle and cluster in the sky and occasionally form the rare Mammatus cloud.

At least ten theories exist on exactly how they form but because of their rarity and chance sightings observational information remains thin. Much knowledge on micro-physical cloud processes lie on the unknown outside edge of the scientific frontier.

White Thorn Acacia

Bina lowered her head. The blisters on her feet ached and she guided her finger across the bubbles of skin. Her stomach growled. She followed the run-off contours of the dry arroyo with her eyes down the bare banks and across the browns of the desert into the setting sun. Clusters of red-green bean pods dangled from the limbs of the white thorn acacia that shaded her. She looked up. Food she thought. Good food.

Acacia Constricta also known as White Thorn Acacia or Mescat Acacia is a native plant in the Trans-Pecos region of Texas. The red-maroon barked shrub tree can grow to heights of 15 feet and to keep grazers at bay, grows one to two inch white thorns from its gray colored branches. Often when there is no grazing or pruning the plant will not grow thorns as it is expensive in materials for the plant to manufacture.

The Acacia is part of the legume family and thus a nitrogen fixer. Legume family root nodules host bacterias known as diazatrophs that convert nitrogen in the air (N2) into ammonia (NH3) which is secreted into the soil and used by plants to biosynthesize nucleotide for DNA and amino acids for proteins. Farmers often plant legumes like soybeans and alfalfa as one of their rotational crops to recharge their field soil.

The bi-pinnate compound leaves of the white thorn acacia fall in drought and occasionally in winter. The plant usually flowers in spring and again in late summer after the monsoon season. It produces a bright yellow fluff ball as its flower and clusters of green-red seed pods with high protein beans contained in a sweet fibrous seed sheath. Oddly though, the plant produces little nectar or pollen and thus has few visiting insects.

Fog

The morning sun warmed the moist air rising from the melting snow of the Stockton Plateau. Particulates not usually found in this region had been swept in by the storm. Now the particulates enhanced condensation of the air just above the ground as the snow lost its whiteness in a great gray blanket that covered the land.

Fog is a cloud that touches the ground. Water vapor, a colorless gas, becomes visible when it condenses and forms tiny water droplets. The gas turning into liquid or the water vapor becoming water is the visible spectrum that the human eye detects. The density of this air and water combination is the key to determining whether scientists consider it fog or mist. Fog reduces visibility to less than 1km while mist reduces visibility to I KM or more.

The temperature difference between the dew point or condensation point and the ambient air temperature is usually reduced with colder temperatures. Fog most often occurs when this temperature differential is less than 4 degrees Fahrenheit.

The process of water vapor turning into water droplets occurs in saturated air with a relative humidity of 100 per cent but can be less when particulates especially hygroscopic or water seeking particles like carbon emissions produce a condensation nuclei that enhances water vapor to condense at a lower relative humidity.

The foggiest places in the world are not found in the Trans-Pecos, but occasionally when storms or fronts sweep in wet cold air along with particulates from pollution sources such as vehicles and smoke stacks, together with other naturally occurring aerosols like soil dust lifted up from wind, the combination can increase the possibility of fog.

Fog on the California coast in Marin County occurs an average of 200 days per year where cooler dry land air meets the wetter warmer air above the Pacific Ocean. It is now believed that the sea weed known as kelp emits iodine particulates producing the condensation nuclei that enhances fog to form in air with less than 100 per cent relative humidity.

Pitaya Strawberry Cactus

Bina Heads North

Bina wiped the tears from her cheeks and tried to remember now her family name: Johnson, Mayfield, Grosse, Simmons. She turned away from the canyon at the river and walked knowing somewhere north and a long day’s horseback ride the adobe house that her parents settled in 1862 was still lying in the cut between the mountains they called Green Valley. She remembered the day they arrived on the horse and wagon and the frigid cold with the wind pitching dust in the air. Madrid, Hernandez, Leyva, she stopped and picked a red fruit from a cluster of cactus tubes.

Pitaya, is the fruit of the strawberry pitaya cactus species that grows in loose ribbed spiny cylindrical clusters of 3 to twenty inches tall in the hot low desert region of the Trans-Pecos. The bright green plant, wrinkled-looking in the dry season is a perennial meaning that it grows and blooms over the spring and summer months and then dies back in winter, returning in the spring from its root-stock rather than seeding as an annual plant does. Most perennials live longer than two years and almost all trees are perennials.

A favorite of hikers in the Trans-Pecos, the pitaya is rich in Vitamin C, phosphorus and antioxidants and contains very little saturated fat. The aroma and taste of the fruit is similar to strawberries. It also has powerful laxative properties and can cause pseudohematuria, a harmless reddening of the urine and feces.

The strawberry pitaya is a vascular plant having lignified tissues for processing water, minerals and photosynthesis. Throughout the warm season it blooms in a variety of flower colors primarily red, pink and purple. It is considered a succulent, a shrub and is a native plant. The latin taxonomy name is Echinocereus enneacanthus meaning hedgehog candle.

Mormon Tea

“Howdy Charlie, Reno. Come on in,” Kate said. She held the door open and the two dusty cowboys walked in. Reno fingered the brim of his hat and Charlie looked around the large appointed room finally holding his gaze on the chandelier. “Would you fellers like some tea, while you wait?” Kate asked. “Tea?” Charlie asked. “Yes, tea, Jack Tea, Jack Mormon’s tea."

The Mormon Tea plant, also known as Pocotillo, Cowboy Tea, Tuttumpin, Ephedra and scientifically as Ephedra Viridis is a perennial shrub that is common in the Trans Pecos. Growing up to four feet tall, the branched broom like plant flowers in March and April. It is a vascular plant meaning that it has lignified tissues allowing the conduction of water, minerals and photosynthetic products to circulate within the plant tissue. These basic minerals and nutrients remain in the plant while the water is transpired through the stomata and into the atmosphere. Circulating resources allows the plant to grow larger than most non-vascular plants. Trees, ferns, moss and flowering plants are vascular.

Natives of the Trans-Pecos used the dried and powdered twigs in poultices for burns and ointment for sores. The tea was used for stomach and bowel disorders.

The plant contains ephedrine a stimulant and has an effect on the body similar to adrenaline. Ephedrine has been found in other plants related to Mormon Tea around the world and the chemical has been used in modern pharmacology as a diuretic, decongestant, appetite suppressant and to treat hypotension associated with anesthesia.

In 1885 a Japanese chemist was the first to isolate ephedrine. It has been used in Chinese herbal medicine for centuries and may have been the substance known as Soma as mentioned in the Hindu sacred text Rig Veda.

Early white settlers in our country used the plant to treat venereal disease and was sometimes served in houses of ill repute.

Giant Yucca

She stood under the Giant Yucca, a sliver of shade in the mid day sun. The chard of her deer hide garment rippling lightly in the breeze. It had been seven days since she had slipped away from the tribe. Three winters she had slept in the mud wattle, three years since she had seen her mother. And now at 13, she stared into the bush of the Yucca in the gravelly soil of the desert scrub and wept.

The Giant Yucca also known as Yucca faxonia, Giant Dagger, Spanish Bayonet and Palma Samandoca is the largest of the yuccas and grows prolifically in the Trans-Pecos. The upright single trunks can reach a circumference of six feet and some thirty feet tall. Sharp pointed leaves protect the terminal stalk and the creamy white bell shaped flowers attract a wide variety of animal life including, big horn sheep, bees and humming birds.

Indians roasted the young flowers and the reddish fruit pods for food. Vaqueros and cowboys have cut the trunks during droughts in parched lands to let cattle chew on the inner stalk.

Giant Yuccas generally grow in elevations above 3000 feet and prefer desert scrub or grasslands. The Dead Horse Mountains near Black Gap Wildlife Management Area provide an ambitious display of the Giant Yucca plant community. Associated species in this part of the Trans-Pecos include gramas, mariola, lechuguilla, sotols, cenizos, acacias and mimosas.

Recently the City of Alpine, Texas was awarded a Champion Tree Certificate for the Giant Yucca growing at the southeast end of City Hall. The plant measured over 23 feet high, a crown spread of 10 feet and a trunk circumference of six feet. It is the largest know Giant Yucca in Texas.